Poster: Clint Eastwood Fan
(see this users gallery)
Twenty Good Years aired from October until November 2006 on NBC.
Two old friends who were ready for retirement but not for the rocking chair decided to make the most of their remaining "twenty good years" in this slapstick sitcom, which flew in the face of Tv's obsession with the young. John ( John Lithgow) was a loud, manic surgeon who had been married three times and who was now forced into retirement at age 60 from Chelsea General Hospital. He rounded up his polar-opposite friend, but toned-down worrier Jeffrey ( Jeffrey Tambor), whose wife had died 20 years earlier and dragged him off on dating adventures and plunging into freezing water at the beach in winter in Speedos. Stella ( Heather Burns) was John's sweet and very pregnant (by a sperm bank)daughter, a grade school teacher, and Hugh ( Jake Sandvig)was Jeffrey's teenage son, a male model. When Jeffrey hung back John Bellowed," You frightened little ferret!" and off they went.Unfortunately they had less time than they thought as the series was pulled after just four episodes.
A Review from Variety
Twenty Good Years
(Series -- NBC, Wed. Oct. 11, 8:30 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY
Filmed in Los Angeles by Werner-Gold-Miller and Marsh McCall Prods. in association with Warner Bros. Television. Executive producers, Tom Werner, Eric Gold, Jimmy Miller, Marsh McCall; co-executive producers, Kirk Rudell, Eric Zicklin, Mike Teverbaugh; producer, Pamela Grant; co-producer, Patricia Breen; director, Terry Hughes; writer, McCall; based on a story by McCall, Michael Leeson.
John Mason - John Lithgow
Jeffrey Pyne - Jeffrey Tambor
Stella Mason - Heather Burns
Hugh Pyne - Jake Sandvig
Given TV's preoccupation with younger demos, the concept behind "Twenty Good Years" -- two 60 year olds deciding to attack what they have left with gusto and not "just mark time" -- is somehow thrilling, a throwback that stands apart by daring place these "Golden Guys" front and center. Even if the material is a trifle slight, pairing of John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor brightens matters, serving up smiles if not outright guffaws. Whether this works is anybody's guess, but credit NBC with thinking outside the (Census) box, giving aging boomers a chance to go loudly into the night.
Created by Marsh McCall and Michael Leeson, series owes an obvious debt to "The Odd Couple," with John Lithgow -- tapping into his otherworldly, "3rd Rock From the Sun"-type willingness to indulge in over-sized gestures -- providing the perfect foil to Tambor's cautious, buttoned-down pal.
Seemingly at the height of their careers -- Lithgow's John is a surgeon, Tambor's Jeffrey a judge -- their 30-year-friendship finds both at something of a crossroads. John is prodded into semi-retirement (not terribly convincingly), while Jeffrey faces pressure to marry his domineering girlfriend (guest Judith Light).
Upset over being shown the door at work, John arrives at his own birthday party smashed, telling his very-pregnant daughter (Heather Burns) that she looks "ferocious and round." He then seizes on the notion that it's time for him and Jeffrey -- given three divorces, John's only successful adult relationship -- to grab life by the horns and do "something that scares us" every day.
It's certainly a fertile premise, and in Lithgow the show has a star that plunges in with reckless abandon -- beginning with the very teeny Speedo he models in the premiere. And while the two haven't previously worked together (hard as that is to imagine), Tambor proves an extremely comfortable counterweight -- an analytical Eeyore that has to be dragged along, sometimes literally, to use the "212 vacation days" he's accrued.
Show's biggest drawback initially is that there's minimal support beyond the central duo, with only John's daughter and Jeffrey's rather bland son (Jake Sandvig) to back them. Theoretically, the two will be off on various adventures, and while it should be fun to see them stare down new thrills, there's room for skepticism as to how long that can be sustained.
Nevertheless, "Twenty Good Years" has two gifted comic actors at its core and a timeslot that cries for patience if NBC is ever to reconstitute something approaching an old-fashioned comedy block. And without hoisting too much weight onto Lithgow and Tambor's shoulders, in success this series will strike a much-needed blow for gray(ing) power -- which, in a business that so blatantly practices ageism, would be good new for everyone, however many good years they might have ahead of them.
A Review from The New York Times
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: October 11, 2006
“Twenty Good Years” is an old-fashioned sitcom, with a grating laugh track and one-two punch lines. It is a male version of “The Golden Girls,” but with weaker writing, and older viewers are not saps.
Mr. Lithgow is John Mason, a pompous, egotistical surgeon, while Mr. Tambor plays Jeffrey Pyne, an indecisive judge. On his 60th birthday, John bullies his best friend, Jeffrey, into a pledge that, together, they make the most of their remaining years. (He figures on 20.)
Mr. Lithgow and Mr. Tambor do the best they can with the material, but the jokes are thin. Determined to coax Jeffrey into joining him in a winter swim with the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, John strips off his raincoat to reveal himself, pale and fleshy, in an itsy-bitsy bathing suit. “Join me, old friend,” he bellows. “I am reborn.”
The actors do not seem ideally suited to their parts, and they might have been better served if the roles had been reversed. Mr. Tambor looks a bit too furtive and unsavory to be a soft-hearted widower. He could be much funnier as an insufferable surgeon; he was brilliantly loony as the corrupt patriarch on “Arrested Development” and also as a pompous talk-show sidekick on “The Larry Sanders Show.”
Mr. Lithgow, who has made dozens of movies and starred in the hit sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun,” can play anything, but he has an underlying sweetness that might make the cowering judge more appealing.
A Review from USA TODAY
'Twenty Good Years' misses target
By Robert Bianco,
USA TODAY
NBC must be aiming Twenty Good Years at an audience that's losing its hearing.
Loudly and ludicrously out of control, Twenty Good Years seems to think men in their 60s are amusing only when they're screaming.
Is this the only way in this youth-obsessed era that two genuine talents such as John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor can get their own show — if they agree to spend the time bellowing like overgrown children? It's enough to make you pity anyone who's listening to the show in surround sound.
But then everything about the show seems designed to misuse its stars and erase our memories of the better work they've done. Perhaps we need some TV equivalent of a pilot's license — something to prove you know how to handle high-powered actors before you're allowed to take them for a spin. At a minimum, that means you should have to promise not to introduce their characters with a juvenile crotch-shot sight gag and a joke about a "tiny target."
As the title suggests, Lithgow and Tambor play two more-than-middle-aged men facing the realization that they may have only 20 good years left. Lithgow is John Mason, a blowhard, playboy surgeon who has been forced into early retirement.
Tambor is Jeffrey Pine, an overly cautious judge being pressured into marriage by his longtime girlfriend (Judith Light, who is as shrill as the show).
You can see where this is headed: John will encourage Jeffrey to "live, live, live." Jeffrey will encourage John to slow down and reach out, which includes connecting with a daughter who, like every other supporting character, blurs into the background.
A better show might be interested in mining humor from the real questions raised by the men-on-the-verge premise. But Good Years is interested only in having Lithgow throw back his raincoat to reveal a skimpy bathing suit underneath — a joke that makes no sense for the characters, because an actual person would have noticed that his friend was naked from the coat down.
As he has proved in such projects as M. Butterfly, 3rd Rock From the Sun and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Lithgow is a versatile, gifted actor, but he doesn't seem to have his own regulator switch. On his own, he will go bigger and bigger until he threatens to explode, and rather than stop him, Good Years cuts him loose. You can hardly blame Tambor for pushing to keep up.
Just as Good Years can't blame us for deciding to tune out.
A Review from The Boston Globe
'Good Years' is just bad times
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff
John "IF I YELL REALLY LOUD WILL YOU THINK I'M FUNNY?" Lithgow is back on TV, in a new sitcom that could be secretly funded by aspirin manufacturers. Lithgow screams his lines as if each one is italicized, or as if he's doing Shakespeare onstage in a stadium without amplification. If I owned an ear-plug company, I'd hire Lithgow as the ultimate test of the product.
Called ``Twenty Good Years," Lithgow's return to TV after ``3rd Rock From the Sun" is an ``Odd Couple"-ish show about two men who decide to live life after 60 to the fullest. Lithgow is the aggressive and self-absorbed surgeon who is slowly retiring; Jeffrey Tambor is the quiet, wimpy judge. Together they make a pact to do something risky every day until they die. In the premiere, tonight at 8:30 on Channel 7, that means going swimming in the ice-cold ocean. For viewers, that means a few shots of Lithgow prancing around proudly in a Speedo.
The show is just awful. Is this the best NBC can come up with for a comedy that doesn't revolve around young people? No matter how old you are, you won't want to spend time with these unappealing guys. They're not geezers, the grumpy old men stereotypes who are kind of lovable; they're just irritating people. They make jokes about penis size and they bicker about who would be the woman if they were lovers, and I found myself hoping their 20 good years left on earth could be downsized to 20 seconds.
I wish I'd been at the meeting when NBC decided to pair this old-school mess with the more ambitious ``30 Rock." The logic must have been something like, ``Well, they both have numbers in their titles."
And Lithgow isn't the only unbearable one; Tambor, who had such fun on ``Arrested Development," is hard to take because he's such a victim of Lithgow's self-absorption. There are a few peripheral characters, including Judith Light as Tambor's girlfriend and Heather Burns as Lithgow's pregnant daughter. But ``Twenty Good Years" is determined to be a starring vehicle for its two leads. When it comes right down to it, there's simply no air left in the room for anyone else.
A Review from The New York Post
OLD YELLERS
'20 YEARS' TOO LONG Rating:
October 11, 2006 -- TALK about ham and cheese!
If you last through 20 minutes of "Twenty Good Years," NBC's new sit-no-com, you are either a saint, a madman or in a tragic and irreversible coma.
Without a doubt, the worst new show of the season, "Twenty Good Years" pits best friends, Jeffrey (Jeffrey Tambor) and John (John Lithgow), against the clock.
Both guys - John's a surgeon and Jeffrey's a judge - are turning 60 this year and decide to let it rip and live life to the fullest.
Good idea, horrible execution.
In fact, it's so horrible you'll think you're the one being executed.
How bad is it? Very. And phony.
For example, at John's hospital-office birthday party, his boss announces, much to surgeon John's shock, that they are putting him on a half-time schedule before they retire him.
Yes, he announces it at the party.
Somebody get a surgeon and cut this dialogue quick before it strangles us.
Meantime, back at boring Judge Jeffrey's house, he's also preparing a party for John, who shows up late and drunk.
And - key moment - he makes Jeffrey realize that they have only 20 or so good years left and so they must do things like hang glide over an active volcano. Please, be my guest.
Earlier, in the day, Jeffrey's girlfriend (Judith Light), in an attempt to force Jeffrey into marriage for reasons I hope never to understand, tells him: "I've met someone! His name is Roberto and he's in love with me!"
The laugh track is so giant at this point, you'd think she was Dave Chappelle.
At the party, she thinks Jeffrey has caved and tells the guests that Jeffrey has an announcement.
Like John's boss's ridiculous announcement, Jeffrey takes this moment to tell their friends that he's breaking up with her. Oh, no!
Why the people who made this show decided to make these guys act like two old Victorian fops - when the world is so ripe for a baby-boomer coming-of-age comedy - is the real question. Can you imagine this show with say, Billy Crystal and Kevin Klein?
But Lithgow and Tambor play it like such giant hams and "Twenty Good Years" ends up like a local theater group production of "La Cage aux Folles."
All that's missing is the Liza Minnelli impersonator.
"Twenty Good Years" Tonight at 8:30 on NBC Absolutely no stars!
|
